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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

BEES, MEAD, AND MEDIEVAL ROMANCE

Today Over Coffee welcomes debut novelist Oberon Wonch. With
the “feasting season” beginning, I asked Oberon to talk about something
food-related from her medieval romance, Come to Me. Take it away, Oberon!

Hello, Sia! Thank you for hosting me here today. I enjoy catching up on
your blog
and love to linger

over your posts of life in the Ozarks, especially the photos of landscapes and
wildlife, some of my favorite things to get lost in on the Internet.

So, it’s not surprising that bees and beekeeping fascinate
me,
too.
Anyone else? I love the imagery of the old-timey wicker skep sitting in a
garden. Since
the heroine of my first book, Come To Me, is an English noblewoman living in 11
th century England, and we knowfrom writings of the time that mead (fermented honey) was a widespread favorite of the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples
of post-Roman Europe, I wanted to include beekeeping and mead-making in my story.

Here is a fraction of what I learned about bee husbandry.8,000-year-old cave paintings show that honey-gathering has been taking place since
pre-historic times when people risked life and limb to climb trees and rob wild hives of the sweet, gooey liquid. Ancient Sumerian, Greek, and Chinese writings
discuss managing bees and providing adequate, manmade habitats. Bee culturebecame supremely
important to the Egyptians, was adopted by Rome, andthen spread through all of Europe.

Even back to our earliest days, we wanted a little
sweetener in our cuisine and went to great lengths to procure it, isn’t that something?

By the time of the Norman conquest of England in late 11th century AD, beekeeping was an indispensable industry. An Anglo-Saxon
noblewoman’s responsibilities included keeping bees (in those lovely, conical straw or wicker
baskets called skeps), extracting honey and beeswax, and overseeing mead production.

The entire arc of beekeeping, from capturing a swarm, to monitoring hives
through the summer, to harvesting the honey and comb in the autumn, is a world of
information too broad to address here.

However, making the mead was incredibly simple and a tribute to the thriftiness of the medieval
housekeeper. Throughout the warm months as honey was gathered, comb was squeezed
through
linen
gauze to extract the last drop of honey for household purposes. The comb and the gauze were rinsed with water (the comb then rendered for its wax to
make candles), and the water was left in covered vats to ferment via the natural yeasts existing in the honey and surrounding air.

Variations in this process were practiced (for example, herbs and spices were added for
flavor),
and later written recipes called forboiling 4-to-1 parts water and honey rather than merely
using the strainings.

So, that’s my little peek into one tiny aspect of
life in the Middle Ages.

Are you as fascinated by bees and beekeeping as I am? Would you like to someday
try mead made in true medieval fashion?

In this twist on the classic Cyrano story, Bridget of Shyleburgh is ordered to help CountGrégoireFitzHenri, the new Earl of Shyleburgh and the man she secretly
loves, court another woman.

Mortified at first, Bridget soon finds herself completely
enthralled by the earl’s whispers of love and desire. His heated wooing tempts a fair maiden to stray
down a path filled with forbidden pleasures.But his words are meant for another… aren’t they? Read More at Amazon

Oberon Wonch has engaged in a love affair with books for as
long as she can remember. Penning her own stories from an early age, she later
earned a degree in World Literature while studying several languages--all in
order to learn what makes a tale endure the ages, but really just to read more
books. Her very favorite stories--both to read and write--are those that
celebrate the happily-ever-after. She enjoys connecting with readers. Contact
her through her website at www.oberonwonch.com or follow her on Twitter @OberonWonch and on Facebook.

32 comments:

Hi Sia and Oberon - great name to have! Your take on beekeeping, honey and mead is fascinating ... and as you say essential to early peoples. Loved reading that and the skeps ... I'm sure your twisted tale will entice too ... good luck - Happy Thanksgiving and with thoughts - Hilary

Good morning, Oberon, and welcome to Over Coffee! We're so glad to have you here! I confess to being a bit leery of bees--I was stung this summer and it was NOT fun, but I do love honey in lots of things! I had no idea beekeeping was so ancient! And your novel sounds wonderful! It's been ages since I read a medieval romance. So glad they're making a comeback!

Good morning, all! Sia, I'm handing you a virtual horn of mead right now. Cheers! Or, as the Saxons said, "Waes hael!"

I've had a taste of the modern rendition of mead and, frankly, I didn't care for it much. :-) In my fantasies, the product of medieval brewing would be much better. After all, it's been drunk for millenia.

Hello, Hilary! Thank you for the compliment about my name. It's my real name, too. My mother is an artist (oil painting)and wildly imaginative. She named me after an early 19th century opera called Oberon, which is about Oberon, the king of fairies in long-standing English and Germanic lore.

I tried mead once, a number of years ago. My mother wanted to try it and of course she didn't want to do it alone, so I was pressed into sharing a taste. Mead is not as sweet as you'd think, and it was sharply alcoholic (or at least the stuff we had was). I thought it would be more syrupy, but it wasn't at all. Since I'm all about sweet and mild flavors, it wasn't the stuff for me.

Wow, what an evocative post, Oberon! It makes me want to play with bees and drink a hearty mug of mead! First, though, I want to read your book. Downloaded it already and I can't wait to dive into the wonderful world there. Thanks for sharing all this cool info and have a wonderful, mead-full Thanksgiving!

OOh, sorry about the bee sting. I've been stung a time or two in my life but it barely effected me. As a teen, I brushed a bee off my head (didn't know it was a bee!) and the little bugger zapped me on my ring finger. It burned and itched for a brief spell, but I remember being more amazed and intrigued than bothered by it. Weird kid, right?

I've learned that many beekeepers (historically and even today) don't really bother with all the protective gear. They know how to avoid riling the insects, and a mild sting here and there isn't much graver to them than a bruise from working in a garden.

Now, the guy in a neighboring development here in suburban Indiana keeps a few hives in his back yard. He suits up like an astronaut to work out there, LOL!

Everyone's heard of the plight of the humble honeybee, right? Apparently their populations are dropping, and there's all sorts of discussion (aka arguing) over why. If we lose the honeybee, we lose a crucial piece of our ecology, and food production will suffer immensely. Let's hope we can save the honeybee!

Susan, I'm so glad you visited! I know you're a garden-and-bug-lover, like me, too.

Well, I'm not so much a bug-lover inside the house. Can't abide it when I find a spider indoors! But outside, in my herbs or flowers? Yes! I work side-by-side with bees all the time out there. I find they stay out of my way. It muse have been the same way with the medieval chatelaine/housekeeper or her garden churls. (I have to get me one of those, a garden churl. Churls were the peasants who labored for their lord. LOL!)

Hi Obe! I'm afraid I don't share your love of bees. I'm allergic to the little buggers, but I respect their influence on society and on mead LOL! I've already downloaded your story and hope to start on in tomorrow. Major congrats on your release! I hope you sell jillions of them! Lisa

Hi, Lisa! Thank you for dropping in. I know bee stings can be deadly to some people, and I think it's safe to assume that's always been the case, so I was wondering how such an allergy was dealt with in past times. Something new for me to research!

I read a Georgian England-set romance once where the hero intentionally got himself stung, knowing he would have a severe histamine reaction (though he didn't call it that in that setting, LOL!), all just to have a reason to stay over night at the heroine's house. I wonder how much research went into that plot line.

Anyway, from you lips to God's ears on the jillion sales, Lisa. You are too funny!

I did a bit of research about bees when I wrote The Seduction of a Duke. The heroine was a beekeeper in that book.

If I recall correctly, honey is the one food that can not spoil. Isn't that amazing? I believe it's also known to have some positive medical benefits. I found the whole organized structure of how does what in a hive fascinating.

I sampled mead long, long ago before my children were born out of curiosity. I think the whole idea of mead is so romantic and steeped in history. Plus the bottle was pretty (grin). But like you, I wasn't fond of the drink. Oh well.

Congratulations on Come to Me. It's on my kindle as we speak. Wishing you great, great success in this endeavor!

My husband, his father, and his grandfather all kept bees. At one point my father in law was in charge of bee inspection for the entire state of Ohio. Bees are (or at least were...what with cut backs I'm not sure) inspected because of their importance to agriculture. We once had four stands of bees in our back yard and when the kids were small they would kit out in keeper gear to help their dad. SIGN You brought back memories.

Hi, Donna! Glad you could drop by. I forgot one of your lovely heroines was a beekeeper! How cool is that? Victorian era, right?

I got all excited about featuring honey in my fiction when I discovered it was used in antiquity and the Middle Ages for helping to heal wounds. In Come To Me, my heroine applies some to her hero's arrow wound.

Thanks for the congrats! And good luck to you with your latest endeavor as well!

Oberon--It was my pleasure to have you visit. I've been looking forward to your book. I'm so glad that Kat was able to host you here on the blog to showcase Come To Me and some of history behind the story.

Thank you for the kind words on my blog and for me.

Looking forward to your next book and visit.

(of course you don't have to wait for the next book to do another guest post. Love to have another one in a couple of months with more tidbits from your research.) :-)